Saturday was one of those beautiful spring days when the most important thing that you can do is to be outside in the fresh air watching other people and animals do the same thing! It comes as no shock to my readers that the ice has just left Canandaigua Lake and now comes the season when the human “snow birds” return to the Lake and anxiously retrieve their boats from winter storage so that they can dock them along the Lake. Canandaigua’s City Pier is another one of those left over attractions which was part of our historical past when the steamboats used to dock along the Lake to pick up freight and passengers. A railroad tracks brought the freight and people to the end of the docks and many “out of Towners” would come to enjoy a nice Sunday afternoon boat ride on the Lake.
For those of us who now live in the jet age, it is just a place to hang out, take a walk, do a little fishing in the waters surrounding the docks, and to enjoy the outdoors. There’s no need for speed here. Slower is better with posted speeds of no greater than 15 miles per hour. There’s no need for high rises as people come here just for a brief visit to refresh themselves, eat a sandwich, feed the birds, or perhaps take a brief nap in their cars and then they return to the jet age world that they live in. The boathouses are another throw back in time when people were permitted to build structures on the lake. It’s a great way of combining the storage of your boat with a place to rest up and enjoy the lake from a little apartment located above your boat. While these structures are no longer permitted and overnight stay is prohibited, I can see the advantages that they would offer.
A lone coot looks for some food along the boathouses and briefly dips below the surface of the water. A little further down on one of the light poles, the sea gull sentry keeps his watch to see if anyone brought a few bread crumbs. If they did, he would send out a signal and soon the sky would be filled with the pesky little scavengers. When darkness begins to fall, Canandaigua’s lighthouse is there to guide all of the boats back to the safety of the docks.
